Question

If we are using an 8-character password that contains only lowercase characters, would increasing the length to 10 characters represent any significant increase in strength?

A) Yes
B) No
C) Marginally
D) Depends on character types

Answer 1

Yes, increasing a password from 8 to 10 lowercase characters greatly improves its strength due to the exponential increase in possible combinations from around 208 billion to more than 141 trillion, thus enhancing its resistance to brute-force attacks.

Step-by-step explanation:

Increasing the length of a password from 8 to 10 characters would indeed represent a significant increase in password strength. Password strength is generally determined by the number of possible combinations that an attacker would have to try in order to guess the password, which is also known as its entropy. With only lowercase characters, there are 26 possible characters for each position in the password.

For an 8-character password, there would be 26^8 possible combinations. However, for a 10-character password, that number increases exponentially to 26^10 possible combinations. This represents a significant increase in the number of total combinations, specifically, from approximately 208 billion combinations to more than 141 trillion combinations. This increase in complexity greatly enhances the password's resistance to brute-force attacks, where an attacker systematically tries every possible combination in order to crack the password.

Therefore, the correct answer to the question would be (A) Yes, because a longer password generally means a more secure password, due to the increase in possible character combinations that an attacker must test to potentially breach the password.